Art of War 12.4

The Art of War (孫子兵法), The Attack By Fire 火攻篇

時者天之燥也日者宿在箕壁翼軫也凡此四宿者風起之日也

The proper season is when the weather is very dry; the special days are those when the moon is in the constellations of the Sieve, the Wall, the Wing or the Cross-bar;

for these four are all days of rising wind.

Lionel Giles (1910), Sun Tzŭ on the Art of War (1910), with Giles' notes — public domain.

Lionel Giles's notes

These are, respectively, the 7th, 14th, 27th, and 28th of the 二十八宮 Twenty-eight Stellar Mansions, corresponding roughly to Sagittarius, Pegasus, Crater and Corvus. The original text, followed by the T‘u Shu, has 月 in place of 宿; the present reading rests on the authority of the T‘ung Tien and Yü Lan. Tu Mu says: 宿者月之所宿也. For 箕壁, both T‘ung Tien and Yü Lan give the more precise location 戊箕東壁. Mei Yao-ch‘ên tells us that by 箕 is meant the tail of the 龍 Dragon; by 壁, the eastern part of that constellation; by 翼 and 軫, the tail of the 鶉 Quail.

此四宿者 is elliptical for 月在此四宿之日. 蕭繹 Hsiao I (afterwards fourth Emperor of the Liang dynasty, A.D. 552–555) is quoted by Tu Yu as saying that the days 丙丁 of spring, 戊已 of summer, 壬癸 of autumn, and 甲乙 of winter bring fierce gales of wind and rain.

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Data: English Wikisource (Public domain texts; transcription CC BY-SA 4.0). Retrieved 2026-10-22.